6/12/2008

Gustave Courbet

233 comments:

Yes! I thought the show was great, had fun. I went to the Met and the Vet (for the pet) again wednesday and it was hot and it wasn't as good, of course, everything closed for instalation. So I guess I saw the met at the best of times and the worst of times.

Went to the deck of the Met and saw the Koons. Not bad.

In a way I see the connection between Koons and Courbet - both playing the game. All great artists do, I suppose.

Courbet at the Met didn't appear conceptual (neither does Koons, really - he seems more and more phenomenological to me - like a WYSIWYG kind of guy - take him at face value, he does) Neither are social commentators like, say, Gericault.

The sun hit the Koons's like a big cyclopean eye, and each hot spot on the baloon dog reminded me to not take pictures, even though I did, what could be more banal than taking a picture? Right Koons? OR was I stealing the soul of the image? Cheating the potential viewer of the immediacy of direct experience?

In the same way, the pictures of female genitalia were really well painted, had a lot of soul, as they say - where the portraits were sometimes somewhat perfunctory - as if Boris Valejo had traveled back in time and done some off the cuff studies for Williamsburg dandies at 50 dollars a pop, no doubt.

In the reviews they make a lot of hoo ha about the optical viewer thing and I wonder about the connections to Duchamp's keyhole piece.

Also the reviews talk about the picture of the dead bride - its a slap dash painting, showing signs of its age. I didn;t find it that compelling, though if you put it on the wall liek a roman fresco in the atrium with a statue or two, you might achieve a sort of uncanny faded aristocratic melancholy.

this is a portrait of irish girl Joanna Hiffernan who is most likely also the model for L'Origine du monde. Courbet had a real sense of duty, did he really invent the term realism? I wonder what he would have thought of reality TV. In fact i'd love to give him a laptop and see what he did with it. Would he log on to modern socialist dot com. I guess it was really valiant of him to come from wealth and devote his time to the people or whatever he pitied them as.

I don't see Courbet as really playing 'the game' - in the sense of going along with the status quo, or academy. To me he's the ultimate I-did-it-my-way guy.

Take-it-or-leave-it stuff. The Realist tag does look funny now, but I suppose the difference between him and preceding Romantics was the absence of literary or historical incident. I guess that's what he meant by painting what he 'saw' - rather than imagined.

But of course, you can't help but be struck by the liberties he takes anyway.

It's fun to look at this stuff now, but I still found myself thinking, sooner or later John Currin is going to plunder these as well - like that one The Desperate Young Man - it already looks half Currin. This one too, which could be titled A Young Painter Struggles to Find the Next Post for Her Blog.

I can't look at these kind of facial expressions and gestures now without thinking of JC.

A rebel? Ah yes polite society! those were different times I guess. I wasn't there though. I wonder what the audio tour does for people - maybe its just a bunch of hot panting.

I like car stereos more than big breasts, but I like cars with stereos and women with big breasts about the same. Real, not paintings of car stereos.

Re Orlan: A severed penis whould be funnier would it not? Everyone likes horror movies, right? I know I do. I'm accepting orders now - any style - though I might prefer expressionist as its easier than glazing and I'm not really into painting penises, truth be told.

There's a long running commercial for penis size enhancement on late night TV that must be pushing a lot of pills - one wonders what the demographic of that is exactly? Like a gag executive gift Could it be cross branded with Rohypnol? Has Damien Hirst comissioned a rohypnol-severed penis painting? To edgy?

I found this - but I don;t hink war is the result of population. Ithink people get bored = ambition. Wars are fought for entertainment (loosely defined) same goes for museum shows and art. How do you occupy your time?What will they let you do? Why are you here? Where are you going?

According to the epic tradition, the protest Gaïa about the uncontrolled increase in human population is at the root of the war. Souffrant du poids de son chargement, la déesse exprime ses plaintes à Zeus . Suffering the weight of its load, the goddess expresses his complaints to Zeus. Le père des dieux, constatant la nécessité de diminuer le nombres d'êtres humains sur terre, provoque les guerres. The father of the gods, noting the need to reduce the numbers of human beings on earth, causing wars. L'expédition de Troie comme d'autres conflits sanglants s'étalant sur une longue période est, d'après Hésiode , la raison pour laquelle la génération des héros est exterminée. The shipment of Troy as other bloody conflicts over a long period, according to Hesiod, the reason for the generation of heroes is exterminated.

I loved seeing this show,and was really moved.... it contained that timeless power that alot of work from that era possesses.I especially loved the mood of the landscapes, with the little caves and caverns that I wanted to wander into..

Is this a Picabia thing again, cuz I don't get it.This new-found popularity. Like Picabia, hiscanvasses suffered from lack of --- Well hecouldn't draw, much less paint in any way I woulddeem as being unlabored. And now he's become theking of Bad Paint...In a ... 'good way'. So atleast labor accounts for something, eh?

I remember the show at the Brooklyn Nochlin andFried's positioning of that show -- figuringcourbet as a sort of political evangelisticcommunard and pro-feminist badboy. Well that makessome sense... That strategy makes us moreforgiving of his actual work. And of course Originheld a better spot (best spot in the room if Iremember). -- but what's this interest now? How heinfluenced bob ross's bladework to such a degreeas to become the cultural giant that he is thisyear? How his kitch ticked John Currin enough tograce the show with an interview of howeffectively kitch tickles? I could've gotten thatfrom a motel 6 wallhanging, which is about asindebted to Courbet than any of Currin's work.

Granted, I'm still fond of Courbet, but to thisdegree? (this months list of publications inwhich Courbet art-stars is astounding!)

In addition to the sculptures, which are on view through Oct. 26, Met visitors can also sample a bit of Mr. Koons’s taste in art. Hanging in the Dutch painting galleries is “Hercules and Achelous,” a 1590 painting by Cornelis van Haarlem that old master experts say Mr. Koons bought for $8.1 million in April at Christie’s in New York.

"In his Swiss exile, well-wishing friends unwisely supplied Courbet with barrels of brandy, which seem to have gone down at an alarming rate; he was also now onto absinthe. Toward the very end his once-fine body had become grotesquely inflated, and he cherished the fantasy that if only he could be lowered into the cold waters of the lake that lay below him, things might still come right for him. He died on December 31, 1877, of dropsy, induced by drink.

yall understand new found popularity as much as you understand why koon buys old masters. simply market manipulation

but what soul nourishment are you going to find looking at some delightfully tired slut that courbet painted such a long time ago? that pathos is eternal? that people dont change? that it sucks getting old? that an artist can look at something, deconstruct it in their mind, and then recreate it in paint? that you can measure a person by the way they do that?

There was a good article I think in the NYT about how doctors lie to cancer patients about their prognosis. It was totally true. I think its not a good idea to give people false hope, I think it is for the doctors benefit, not the patient. I can understand that. But in art, i think its what people want.

I feel that paint had a heartfelt effect upon Koons.In the form of Dali -- Koon's catalyst, no?

Incidentally I can't stop thinking of Dali'slanguage in that little book he wrote abouttechnique in painting. An alchemical language,Flowery and resisting and all, but also sound advice...Book's called "50 Secrets of Magic Craftsmanship"And it really is a great booklet about paint.

The same author who designed the Chupa logo.Whatever Moves Your World™ yo.

I come back to the thought of Koons, in some pub, praising how nobody painted bread better than Dali. But the low countries definately had a way with bread. Perhaps this is where his interest led.

The thing about High and Low art is that one is supposed to be understood by everybody, a “real for the people” dealio, and the other under the crude and nuance-free divide a specialized and self-reflexive elitist undertaking. It is unfortunate that art suffers this 2-speed division, in a way. I can’t imagine what it would do to science if everyone expected that they should understand it’s highest complexities in common terms. The split is implying some kind of threat to concentration. New High has to avoid absorbtion into the total entertainment industry (and other musuem values) to program programmes and measure relevance by the door count. Old high is now kinda Low status quo, with traces of itself marred by common categorization. One inverts the common and the other is aloof beyond measure, they can both freely interpret each other for their own ends, nice dichotomy, and everyone is happily trapped. Roaming free is overrated. Narcissus lives in a cranium or something.

Was that one of a nude lying on her back with a parrot on her raised hand, in the show? I think it was the same model. It always cracked me up. There’s probably some fascinating story behind it, but just the zany composition does it for me.

I don't remember it if it was. Also I don't remember any still lifes - all overshadowed by the comissioned nudes I'm afraid.

I guess people would bring food to Courbet when he was in prison and he would paint that. I guess they let him have paint and visitors while languishing in jail. Why didn't he just transform into a giant or something? No one knows.

The guy who worked on the movie Pumkinhead died recently - an animatronic genius. Would Courbet have been a photographer or a director? Probably.

Cap,i believe the met owns that girl/parrot piece (unless they sold it recently)... I think I remember seeing it.It was a really crowded day.

And to be quite honest -- though it is a scrumptious piece for many reasons, it is not one that looks good behind a mass of people.

It's all there though. What is there to go into? Erotic symbolism, great rendering of flesh, subject completely involved in her own action. Courbet once again takes us thru the backside --but this time without depicting a backside. She is in fact, pictorially upside down. How erotic.There are 2 posts.. one that rises out of the bush of hair, one that is empty....( that perch from which the parrot glides.)When manet decided to paint a kind of response,it was through the frontal gaze of the beholder. A quite different effect, but a good illustration of the contrast between two ways of seeing. But really now, ontological thought takes away from the baseness of the picture, does it not? It's an exceptional pic as far as good porn goes.

Courbet can be quite obvious when it comes to the theatricality of his erotic pics, but it doesn't take away from the enjoyment. "Sleep" that pink underside of the sheets, lower left. Well done C.

Yes, Courbet would've probably been a director. DP, perhaps? Or a Greenaway? Not quite Greenaway... Fried commented about the difference in skin coloring between the two chicks in Sleep... That's not symbolism -- it's about readheads vs. brunettes.

it's funny how people, but especially femme get broken down into hair color.

"in our so very civilized society it is necessary for me to live the life of a savage. I must be free even of governments. The people have my sympathies, I must address myself to them directly." GC

the Courbet retrospective that was at the Brooklyn Museum earlier this winter [written in 1989].

i always thought the parrot one looked like she was in the hull of a ship and somehow attached pirate free vibes. apparently back in the day the word pirate in dutch was something close to janke, or yankee. european ideas pirated elsewhere to avoid licensing fees and other barriers. now it's china's turn few hundred later, same deal. if it's jo again, or ;slut' as no rush calls her, the irish were great ship builders. when whistler saw jo's bits in a courbet their friendship was over.,

I wondered about the Whistler - Courbet friendship. It seems so unlikely. But I suppose we stereoptype these guys by their styles and forget that the art world is not that vast. It's like seeing photos of Beuys and Warhol together and I always think "huh?" -like they would have nothing to say to one another.

It's still a crazy angle and idea for a painting (the parrot one) and I guess Heffernan was up for it, and must have known that she was kissing JMW goodbye when she shed the rest of her kit. But this one definitely shows a sober and pensive side. Courbet had really met his match there, a bit like Manet and that model he used in Olympia and other key works. It's sort of like the film director and star thing - if and when you hit on it - JACKPOT - the sum is way greater than the parts.

yeah whistler was there, oscar wilde in tow in the paris cafe often, degas and manet present. they were friends enough for jo to be recommended to courbet by whistler. the only way we know that du monde was of probably her is by how sharply their contact stopped after it. can't hide that shit with flame. Legion d'Honneur. but they probably had little more than a few things to impart. mutual arrogance would have put a stop to anything further.

u do appear rather heartless, but you seem to be quite practiced at writing it up that way

i'll say this. u seem to be a little in love with the subject of this painting. Id extrapolate that its courbet himelf that we fall in love with when we see the painting. he's pirated a face, body and wavy red hair, but it's him all right.

who among our contemporary portraitists can make us fall in love with their subject/self? would they want to, even?

i like waht hollie hobbies dotter is doing with skin and hair and especially those watery eyes. with a nod to sailor moon right? good example peg. there is seductive beauty there even tho there is also a huge wink. freuds got the realism but not the empathy or sensuality.

Hosfelt is a good gallery, nice space. Jim Campbell has done some nice shows there. They opened a nyc outpost and it looks like Naomie Kremer hopped over from Modernism? Dont know, she's still on the Modernism site. Aug 10-Sept 11 at Hosfelt NYC. Love her stuff

Well then to be fair, every gallery develops acertain look by organic means. Or memes rather.

I do consider Zach Feuer to be cousin to Jack'Paper & Gouache' Hanley. The current Danica Phelpsshow at Feuer could easily be fit in Hanley (ifhanley had higher ceilings)... even though DP hasnothing to do with Mission, geographicallyspeaking. Deitch, also a cousin -- from the otherside of the familia...

I don't know, No Rush... Threat Of Chance lookses-ef to me. I will contrast this withlast year's the installation by Nick Z and KaiAlthoff at Gladstone-- both constructed interiorswith street-cred signification....

Wood vs. Carpet... Hmmmm.

Had the show been at Deitch, then of coursewe would've had more wood.

But alas we had carpet and the results were funky fresh.

Wood was a meme passed down via Margaret Kilgallen.

Hosfelt. I just can't get over the similaritybtween Reed Danziger's early work and Julie Chang'snew work. Memes are passed....And will they infect NY via Hosfelt NY andnewly opened Garson Baker (julie baker coming from cali.)?Not sure... Patterns patterns patterns. Hosfelt should've paired up with Baker to corner the pattern market,and leave the figurative painting to dolby chadwick -- known fortheir strong cocktails and hot thursday night chicks -- all thata figurative painter needs to survive (besides a projector)

Was it Catherine Clark who really got the Mcgee/missionschool going? I believe so -- Back then i remember it was called the Morphosgallery on hayes. My point is that Catherine Clark has really grown into it's own,with a different voice... Julie Heffernan... good painter in my bookhey isn't she brooklyn-based?A reverse-osmosis is at play, yo.

Looks good. There's an Amy-Cutler-curatedexhibit based on henry darger showing somehere (midtown?), that features severalphotogs of which this reminds me. Perhapsyou might look it up. It's on my list of thingsto see. (Henry darger was up last month inchelsea i forgot where but it was nice.)

Like it liek a bowl full of hard candy on a hot saturday afternoon and nothing to wash it down with but sugarless (not free) koolaide.

Very academic, like at a faculty show.

Hillary Harkness has the same obsessive gene, but better tonal range and of course lots of chicks doing it and shit. I;m fond of the cutaway view, I used to use it myself, but I'll retire it in deference, like jersy number 69. Or whatever maybe I;ll do the dollhouse dealio again, she doesn't own it does she? I hope not.

no theres some historical reference I forget. Like Archiboldo's vegie faces. Cornucopia and shit. She should change it up though, the composition sucks. Like portraiture in the met - dark or blurred grounds, more attention on the face, photo9graphy took care of depth of field a long time ago - i liek the student pics with the double exposure for the yearbook.

Courbet got the photgraphic crop down - I think thats significant, if not entirely engaging.

dhalias are bombastic and take a lot of water. WIlfowers are nice, but the sunflower is not "high class" like the orchid - i hate orchids as well as hot house flowers in genreal. Give me a marigold or jack in the pulpit any day.

i like tha tpainting a lot. It has a hot chick with perfect breasts - as if her husband was a plastic surgeon, and now, she is cheating on him with a cave man. That is hot, like the torch, with its supernatural/symbolic flame. WOwo. And wqhat is that face in the abackgroun\d? ANd why are they on a cliff? Its as if god made a still life adn pronounced it good, as I do.

Birk again not a fave. I dont bother looking close. But prison is a theme thats dear. Theme or meme? Yknow SB did the landscapes with tiny prisons in the background.

Any way I like those guys that do art from prison. Theres one death row guy that Braunstein Quay showed, but that was too exploitational. Theres a phtotgrapher in the Mission that has a magazine about prison artists that is astounding. Not sure I can find that on the web. May not even be on the web. Also love Sterling Ruby's stuff about prisons/gangs.

Thing about Birk is his style is too copied, could be Bierstadt, or any of a number of painters. I think that's the joke. Just doesnt interest me.

Rausch I love because he assimilated a bunch of styles and made an all new one. I was buzzing in that low ceilinged room at the Met.

One thing that's very important about flowers, y'all. You don't want to crush them. Cuz then it's no more fun. Especailly those exotics. You can always try apologizing tho. Amazing how often it works...

Dennis Miller: I don't want to go on a rant, here, but America's foreign policy makes about as much sense as Beowulf having sex with Robert Fulton at the first battle of Antietam. I mean when a neo-conservative defenestrates it's like Raskolnikov filibuster deoxymonohydroxinate...

Robert Fulton (November 14, 1765 – February 24, 1815) was a U.S. engineer and inventor who is widely credited with developing the first commercially successful steam-powered steamboat. He also designed a new type of a steam warship. In 1800 he was commissioned by Napoleon Bonaparte to design Nautilus, which was the first practical submarine in history.[1]

The Battle of Antietam (also known as the Battle of Sharpsburg, particularly in the South), fought on September 17, 1862, near Sharpsburg, Maryland, and Antietam Creek, as part of the Maryland Campaign, was the first major battle in the American Civil War to take place on Northern soil. It was the bloodiest single-day battle in American history, with about 23,000 casualties.[1]An anachronism (from the Greek "ανά", "against", and "χρόνος", "time") is anything that is temporally incongruous in the time period it has been placed in—that is, it appears in a temporal context in which it seems sufficiently out of place as to be peculiar, incomprehensible or impossible. The item is often an object, but may be a verbal expression, a technology, a philosophical idea, a musical style, a material, a custom, or anything else closely enough bound to a particular period as to seem odd outside it.

Cap -- there's a new interpretation i thought of just now. Jo's hair is a fuckin mess, and probably gets all over the place. His numerous portraits are very un-lilith like. In that they stress the stress that hair-entropy evokes. You know hair-entropy... She's cute and all, but her hair ends up sticking to your paintings... and on the carpet in and in the bathroom.

Wash your stupid hairChange the clothes you wearI never really caredComb your stupid hairHow long 'till you see clearly?It's on you see softley, How long?Quite on timeCan't make up your mindI never really caredHow you wearLady kept me waiting, for an hourI started facing and steppin' on the flowersI got to lookin' in a matterI saw the answer on why you're not hereYou kept me waiting , for an hourIn my hand, In my handYou No Show, you Know Show, I know you wouldn't goYou Know Show, you Know ShowYou don't go, You're a No Show

I appreciate Courbet and the Weezer dude's attempts at realism. Courbet I think really nails it. The Weezer dude is lying about what he cares about but probably on purpose so you see (realistically/ironically) that he's a liar. That's good too.

Rosetti Ive always loved, I had a poster of his Proserpine in my bedroom when I was a (weird) teenager. But his depiction of Lilith is so far off any description or idea of what she was about, that its almost laughable.

___Outside in the hall theres a catfightIts well after midnightI guess Ill be allrightIm laid out on the floorDrunk and poorHow much longer how much more

Rock me to sleepStrong & deep.The screaming cats they give me the creepsBut aside from all that I feel no painStaring up at the ceiling stains...neon in the window...sirens far away...news on the radio happy birthday happy birthday happy birthday

Theyre at it again next doorThis whole floor I swearTheyre out to drive me crazyNot right now Im high as a cloud Im soft and gray and lazy...neon in the window...sirens far away...news on the radio happy birthday happy birthday happy birthday

HOLD it up sternly! See this it sends back! (Who is it? Is it you?) Outside fair costume—within ashes and filth, No more a flashing eye—no more a sonorous voice or springy step; Now some slave’s eye, voice, hands, step, A drunkard’s breath, unwholesome eater’s face, venerealee’s flesh,Lungs rotting away piecemeal, stomach sour and cankerous, Joints rheumatic, bowels clogged with abomination, Blood circulating dark and poisonous streams, Words babble, hearing and touch callous, No brain, no heart left—no magnetism of sex;Such, from one look in this looking-glass ere you go hence, Such a result so soon—and from such a beginning!

and in a hallway toward the drawing section,there was the rosettti -- awatercolor of the oil that resides somewhere else.

and then I walked thru Whistler and realized how much of a fuckin genius he was... follow me now...

There's a new(ly rotated) degas there at the met.with crazy RED ibises or birds or something thathe added later. Crazy. Had the style of hisspartans, but the red birds were just bizzarre...As if the chapman bros did a thing on an early degas. But only better. Cuz degas did it.

No rush it reminds me of the fuckin weird lizard-man of Whistler's that the DeYoung owns.Such weirdnesses are singularities.

Whenever I go to the new deyoung I spend the whole time in the oceania collection. It's killer. Love whistler tho. The green lizard man is a hoot. Last fall when we were in ny we had to go to the frick bcuz the old man loves that place. Those two big portraits they have there--the pinkish brown one of the woman from behind-Mrs Leyland. With red hair no less. I remember loving the mucky color of it. "The portrait is in fact so totally a work of exquisite design that Whistler’s contemporary Dante Gabriel Rossetti wrote of it, with some reason: 'I cannot see that it is at all a likeness.'”

Anybody see JKalm's YouTube video of the Koons baloonz? JK's all excited that he got mentioned in the Pink Section. Top of the Pops in SF. Koons made a GREAT comment about his surfaces and the surfaces of all the other paintings below in the Met. Is that guy a genius or what? I wasn't actually buying zips idea that he was wysiwyg straightforward, but he really is earnest and trying to tell u something. I'm gettin it Jeff!

and the fabric is just -- if ever one couldcommand a mastery of limpness it wouldbe whistler. (oppose with bernini or sargentwho made use of fabric in a more dramatic--dare i say comic-booky way).

Limpness in and wanness in a good way. It's a challenge -- when the urge is to smackviewers with prowess or excess (not to say that'sbad -- i'm a big fan of bernini)

I could only imagine a painterlike Luc Tuymans wishing he could approximateWhister's subtelty in color and mark makingand interplay of light. Wanness is somethingof a holy grail in painting. But even now, whistlermakes even robert ryman seem heavy handed.

Speaking of rosen,I think Gillian Carnegie on good daysapproaches whistler's sensibility --I think she's got it in a kind of in a slade-gwen-johnian kind of way -- notin palette, but in her ability tounderstate. And she does so quite well.

I don't like her butt paintings (i've readart-writing that tries to relate them withCourbet's origin) -- to that I say: Pfff!)

I like whistler. Courbet meets him a few feet on the way in the met show - though they dont get medieval with quarterstaves that I can see.

Japanese zen ink drawings aren't heavy handed, have clean lines, nods to chaos, conformity, control, submission, denial (Calvinist or otherwise - its secular). Traditional, open to "the hand" but not to radical change (why should one?)

I like that better than Tuymans or Carnegie - maybe because I am a cool six degrees below.

I have noticed a trend in restaurant decor - towards victorian era gas-electric switchover on to deco. Reminds me of tourist towns and nostalgia for pre-digital days. Analog over syth - lo fi and superflat are boring. Bring on the worms!

Or is that just wishfull thinking - gen y has a text message culture simular to the note passing/calling card culture of the victorians - maybe that's where it will all align. Voice of the master. Courbet fits in the pardadigm, Koons is outside the gates pedantically highlighting the strength and the futility of style over substance.

if whistler work was wan to begin with think of what a slap 1-- years has done to help it faaaaade (forget museum conservation - it does well but suffers the weather like we all do). just like photographs from grandparents, things that have evidence of having aged carry loss, like gaps in the story, mystery, loss equals poetry, poetry equals soulful, NOSTALGIA is the primary state. japanese idea of beauty in wabi-sabi, time rust decay balance old new nothing lasts ephemera etc, tuymans going straight for the jugular and trying to make it look 100 years old even though he made it yesterday, looks good next to the real thing above the period mahogany bookcase, neo does it as well. it's easy on the eye, it whispers, it whistlers. i've said this before. i love it a lot the fade, especially on my jeans, but still i don't buy the nostalgia too much because it's explicitly a pedestal maker. i'm tired of present kickers, future beating is for retirees. are we still carrying the torch or not? if it aint old, it aint old, so let recent surfaces gleam, polish em up koonstyle. both fade and gloss are pretense gimmick when forced, but in the laws of nature, both make sense under the weather. let the weather work it out, ruins are puzzles. puzzles are myths. mythological pathos is EVERYTHING. there are other ways to make understatement, like looking into spiderwebs.

paint in oils, leave to dry and then sandpaper as much of it off as you can. actually no paint in acrylic and then wash most of it off in the spa bath. actually no, buy a giant solid chinese imitation italian provincial dining table, replete with fresh chain bashing to give it that beaten PERIOD look. bleh. fading is eurolust.

Encouraged to identify himself with some other time and some other person, today's individual has managed to have his present stolen from him under the illusion of gaining a historical perspective. In a spectacular space-time ("You are entering history, comrades.") he loses the taste of authentic life. Yet, those who refuse the heroism of historical action are warped by the complementary mystification that the psychological sector bestows on them. These two categories rub shoulders, and fuse in the extreme poverty of recuperation. You choose: either history or a nice quiet life.

when you buy paint from the shop, it is new. it will look delicious. to counter it's delicious look, one will have to tarnish it. this will produce an effect that the painting is not brand new, among other things. look at the paint on vehicles. the 15 magazines devoted entirely to wrinkle spotting. ageism is real. too real. when diluting and tarnishing, who are they trying to please? is it a statement of auto-accelerated erosion and entropy? an attempt to join or enter into a point in history where that fade is already apparent, or is it just to be quieter as a painting. I like quietness. Neo's paintings do look almost as perfectly faded as any of the old german books he derives those images from. But once upon a time the prints in those books gleamed. If that's where he wants to enter it, then it becomes vital to the work. But there has to be a point to do so. To be quiet, or to choose the history that chose you. So right now there is no excuse not to shine, unless there is one.

Webthing, I don't buy it. It's just way too commonplace for art writers to spot a decrease in chroma in figurative painting and immediately flag it for being overly-nostalgic or attach it to history -- though that may be true in some cases.It's such a lazy oversimplification and rehashof the gravy/no-gravy arguement of the 19th centpainters when new pigments became available.

And so what do propose for a more contemporary --and thus less pedestrian treatment of palette?The converse? As if we haven't seen saturated andgleaming chroma in figurative work of past. Justone example: Illustrated manscripts and raginis of15th - 18th century India.

In other mediums like photography, palette maybe swinging the other way. Fake Velvia colors ofthe film days are giving way to the understatedCreamsickle palettes of Canon digital signal processor design.

No rush I like. I do think the crumpled paper thingis making it's way through the country. Sean Raspet's earlywork made use of the language. http://www.danielreichgallery.com/raspet01.html

I also know a guy in vancouverthat has taken that on. (Raspett no longer seems tobe doing the volumetric thing anymore)

How do we pick through the Nostalgia when looking at this Courbet? Does it align with the remodernist manifesto of March, 2000? Is it in some way free from the nihilism and oft cynical grips of postmodernism, the movement that fractured everything (or at least thought it did)? Is the return to Victorian decor and style a throwback to a romantic version of a romantic ideal lost in space? Where is Sofia Coppola? Why is carbon fibre so much uglier than teak? Is it? Some people really don't care and are going forth.

jpc i dis/agree with you buddy, just playing d'advocate. the truth is i'd rather spend more time with any of the fader painters works. hmmm, actually maybe not, they burn so slow as to spend a life with, not a night on the bubbles in the stockroom. i just pick at myself for this fadelust, i've got it bad. why? hi-chroma has been done wayyback i know. but if you look at all the paintings that have been on this page of pnyc, most of the works have that light and beautiful treatment and handling. i know it's gorgeous. it is. it's gentle. or something. delicate and peaceful, that's what it's supposed to be mostly about. but not all about. that's be too one dimensional. color really is such a magical phenomenon.

hi lo = 2 dimension.

hi med lo = 3 dimension.

hi med-hi lo = 3 dimension.

hi med-hi med-lo lo = 3 dimension.

point A--------------->point B = the necessity of and basis of VERBAL/SEXUAL language.

All the truth is in between. ie/ there is no truth absolute.

Diaphanous material always costs a lot of money. IS APPRECIATION ABOUT HOW REFINED SOMETHING IS? petrol is worth more than crude. Point A, Point B.

Lust to consume tactile or sensuouslayered and well-considered output shouldnever be systemically omitted by culture in anypoint in history.

Because Gravy is sometimes just gravy-licious.

Sometimes though, the vernacular becomesmore important and fussed-over than theform from which the vernacular sprang.

Take food culture and it's vocabulary. Ever notice how the word 'comfit' isa word used to describe everything fromcommon fruit jam to anything braised, tossedor chopped? At some point it became an empty free-floating signifier.

This word -- enjoying it's pedestal for a fewyears now, described a technological limitationin which meat had to be preserved in it's own fatand gelatin. And you point that out to someoneabout to consume some mint/melon comfit andthey say 'yuck ... fat and gelatin....' You haveto remind them that it's rally not comfit.What they're consuming is a word with lesscalories.

While once signifier with deep historicalanchor, it has since branched off to serve abranding purpose of describing high-class food preparation, when what you really haveis jam, jelly, chopped fruit, food cooked in a crockpot, garlic cooked in foil, salsa for yourtostidos, you name it).

Comfit.

Now my point is: For those who want to really cook a duck or short rib comfit, prepare yourselfto savor the fat and gelatin on your tounge.

Mmmmm.

Yeah, I know we have things calledfreezers and refrigerators and irradiators,and comfit as a Food Preparation isn't reallyneeded these days, and is antiquated andprobably irresponsible from a modernhealth-conscious perspective... but Mmmm.

I'm not sure what Koons has to do with this painting, but he seems Bobo to me not Boho. GC was Boho as well as "Soci;" he ended depressed mostly due to the failure of his political ideals, not due to Boho alcoholism for its own sake. The painting is indeed weirdly wonderful.

More than other sins, the definition of sloth has changed considerably since its original inclusion among the seven deadly sins. In fact it was first called the sin of sadness or despair. It had been in the early years of Christianity characterized by what modern writers would now describe as melancholy: apathy, depression, and joylessness — the last being viewed as being a refusal to enjoy the goodness of God and the world he created. Originally, its place was fulfilled by two other aspects, acedia and sadness. The former described a spiritual apathy that affected the faithful by discouraging them from their religious work. Sadness (tristitia in Latin) described a feeling of dissatisfaction or discontent, which caused unhappiness with one's current situation. When Thomas Aquinas selected acedia for his list, he described it as an "uneasiness of the mind", being a progenitor for lesser sins such as restlessness and instability. Dante refined this definition further, describing sloth as being the "failure to love God with all one's heart, all one's mind and all one's soul." He also described it as the middle sin, and as such was the only sin characterised by an absence or insufficiency of love. In his "Purgatorio", the slothful penitents were made to run continuously at top speed.

The modern view of the vice, as highlighted by its contrary virtue of zeal or diligence, is that it represents the failure to utilize one's talents and gifts. For example, a student who does not work beyond what is required (and thus fails to achieve his or her full potential) could be labeled slothful.

Current interpretations are therefore much less stringent and comprehensive than they were in medieval times, and portray sloth as being more simply a sin of laziness or indifference, of an unwillingness to act, an unwillingness to care (rather than a failure to love God and his works). For this reason sloth is now often seen as being considerably less serious than the other sins, more a sin of omission than of commission.

who white? i love that shit. but i don't know if it will be timeless. it will be very of it's time coz it holds a rear-view mirror thats catching glimpses of the kids on the street as you look back. she's old enough to have seen it all twice though.

pppppppppainting to reflect the times. ppppppppppainting to transcend the times.

to make a classic record the musician must speak in a new language that wasn't being spoken at the time. to make a hit record the musician must speak in the language going around at the time. it's all derivative in the end, but there's nothing like being surprised. especially when it lasts a while, opposite of dour tannins.

well i do know she's older than emergedbut not old enough to be on thehind-sighted twice-cooked list ofmenu entrées. -- where history's to judgewhether or not there'll be a real connectionwith street and WW.

by street i meant fashioniable retrograde , the similar color cycle now having spun three times at the beginning to middle of each decade in perfect sequence. on the fm, playing the greatest hits of the 80's, 90's and today. i still don't mind WW coz she's at the party. but we gotta do something deeper, it's on its way, out here on the culture flats. society is feeling lite. art goes there. wait for the pullback and hey, there might not be one. up, up, and away!

beck is so way ahead of weezer, i hear you - but its both derivative crap 9whaqt you meant right?) . I do like the music though. I was singing some lyrics tonight. Bottles and cans and just clap your hands. Should I go do shots at the local bar or stay in and post to a stupid blog. I dont know. People out here feel trapped. I guess its all relative. got to get back to brooklyn - this shit is bringing me down.

Those connections arent conscious although concerns might be similar. I think some of what balincourt does that might be perceived as consumed really happened simultaneously. Tuymans is a funny one. Never thought about that but a few people I respect have mentined it to me. Giotto, Haley,Smithson, lewitt, these are the shoulders i want to stand on.Chowhound? not sure what that is.

chowhound is simply delish...(not really i refer only to CH wheni'm in the bush and want to avoidgetting the runs). Just wash your chowfrom all culture before entering your studio.

Your cage iterations prob predates tuymans's'Within' but since your online pics recall 'Within',perhaps it's an online brand-saturation issuemore than it is an artistic one. Your 2007 sf artscommision pics clarify your use of the cage incontrast from that one LT 'Within'.

I thought at one point youmust've been into Borges's Map but nowI think probably not. More like cage ascoordinates stemming from some sort ofa digital experience. (professional, consumerpedestrian? dunno.) But you're clearly intoartficial experience.

Ive read a good deal of Borges. i enjoy. the one to one scale... the sense of absurd. celebration.

I'm interested in landscape as the carrier of time. landscape as crystalline fabric. haptic navigation of visual space. a thousand video games all at once from all times fitting on one screen creating a space outside of time. horizontal organization. no drawers. everything visible.

munch a bunch of crunch-a-munch

Dunkin donuts is a stink bomb left unattended in your car. sticky sweet.

OMG, DT you said too much (like in that woody allen movie where diane weist keeps saying to john cusak, "don't speak"). Being fascinated with the fat kid. That bursts the bubble. Now I see the NPR-ness of what you're doing. Boo-hoo. I always get fooled by elegance.

I am the fat kid. Fighting for my life to get out of this prison. I think that's why I feel so sympathetic to Koons. Maybe his solution is impure, but its as real as the day is long, and you know he had to do it. Nothing to fall back on in his case.

I am a boring writer-flat.Regarding wendy w,at least the work is ugly,asphalt and gatorade windex,magic markers-slack and blare-most see this enough as it is -and its like a smart girl in a class of stoners-and the stoners say'yeah,you are so smart-but suzanne doesnt take you down to the river,because shes really really straight and repressed,after all-chick needs some ayahuasca or something-maybe get out of the east coast